The only way of meeting the historical argument, containing as it does admitted truth, and supported as it is by high authorities, is to survey the broad phenomena of Irish history, and see what are the inferences which they warrant.[9] Whoever wishes to derive instruction from the melancholy history of the kingdom of Ireland must, as has already been intimated, rid himself from the delusions caused in the domain of history by personification. He must dismiss the notion that England and Ireland are persons to be charged with individual and continuous responsibility for the crimes or follies of past ages. He must check the natural but misguiding tendency of the human mind to imagine that in national affairs when anything goes wrong you can always, or indeed generally, lay your finger upon some definite assignable wrong-doer, that is, upon some man or some men who can be held responsible for political calamities or errors, as a murderer may be held guilty of murder, or a robber of theft. A calm critic should also reflect on the profound truth of the dictum (attributed by the way to an Irishman) that "history is at best but an old almanack," and, while not entertaining any great hope that antiquarian research can afford much direct guidance as to the proper mode of arranging the future relations between England and Ireland, remember that the most salutary function of the study of the past is to tone down those historical animosities which derive their bitterness from the ignorant habit of trying the actors in bygone scenes by moral laws to which they are not justly amenable. The moral function of an historian is to diminish the hatreds which divide nation from nation and class from class; such as at the present moment do more to prevent real unity between the inhabitants of the two islands making up the United Kingdom than do unjust laws or vicious institutions. To a student who regards with philosophic calmness a topic which has mainly been dealt with by politicians or agitators, it easily becomes apparent that the crimes or failures of England, no less than the vices or miseries of England, have to a great extent flowed from causes too general to be identified with the intentional wrong-doing either of rulers or of subjects.